Paint-a-Thon: What 40 Volunteers and a Few Gallons of Paint Did for Garden Place Academy
On a warm Saturday morning in late July, about 40 volunteers showed up to Garden Place Academy on Lincoln Street with paintbrushes, rollers, and a shared willingness to spend their day on their hands and knees in the sun. By 2 p.m., the school's blacktop looked like a completely different place.
UCAN's Paint-a-Thon was a community impact project in the truest sense of the phrase. No single person or organization could have pulled it off alone, and the result belongs to everyone who was part of it.
Tiger On the Blacktop
The centerpiece of the day was created by Denver artist Randy Segura of ArtHotSpot Studios, who arrived the day before the event to begin laying the groundwork. Using a stencil he designed himself, Segura produced a large-scale tiger directly on the blacktop (the mascot of Garden Place Academy) in a perspective painting style that gives the figure a striking, almost three-dimensional presence from the right angle.
By the time volunteers arrived Saturday morning, the outline was in place. Segura continued working through the event, refining details while the rest of the crew got to work on the surrounding pavement.
A Map the Kids Can Play On
Alongside Segura's work, volunteers painted a large, colorful map of the United States across the blacktop—the kind of painted playground feature that makes a school feel cared for and gives kids something to interact with every single day they are outside. The finished map covers a wide stretch of the pavement in purple, yellow, orange, green, and blue, and it turned out beautifully.
Kids were part of the painting too. Watching them crouch down with brushes and fill in sections of the map, working alongside adults from the neighborhood, was exactly what this kind of event is supposed to look like.
It Took a Village (and a Few Sponsors)
None of this happens without the volunteers who gave up a Saturday, or without the sponsors who made the supplies and logistics possible. UCAN is grateful to Elyon Restoration, Davis Schilken PC Law Offices, the National Western Center, Platinum Exteriors, and Superior Solar Solutions for their support. Lunch was served, music filled the air, and the mood throughout the day was the kind that is hard to manufacture—it just happens when the right group of people shows up for the right reason.
Garden Place Academy's students will walk out to that blacktop when school starts back up and find something waiting for them that was not there before. That is what UCAN is here to do.
